How to implement a successful business intelligence strategy

WITH features such as real-time insights, to spur the growth of a company or to highlight a savings opportunity, business intelligence (BI) has evolved to become an essential tool for organizations across all industries.

In fact, modern, agile teams are becoming increasingly reliant on  BI to help them make better business decisions, boost productivity and maximize revenue.

While companies see technology as a crucial tool for their long term success, many also struggle to integrate it into their operations.

However, hurdles faced by companies which include picking the right solution, investing in suitable training and deploying at scale could all be overcome with some proper planning and strategy.

Here are five steps to follow to ensure successful BI implementations;

#1 | Practice data hygiene

It is imperative that databases are kept neat and tidy. Businesses should get in the habit of removing outdated and irrelevant records before deploying a BI project.

Businesses should also be aware of the origin of the data and start prioritizing all the information gathered from within the organization. This is because data generated in-house are more reliable than secondary ones.

Proper standardized data entry processes and format should also be established, to reduce the inconsistencies and duplication, and ensure that data is clean.

#2 | Plan for a long haul

Businesses need to chart a definite, comprehensive, long term BI roadmap, that could be adhered by the entire organization.

And to do that, the current situation and set-up have to be evaluated. That way, current good practices and processes that are yielding good results can be kept and improved upon. Then, companies can start strategizing for essential BI processes.

Companies should also be aware of the technology, and infrastructure that is required to implement the solution, as well all the different stakeholders and their objectives in ensuring successful BI integration.

#3 | Foster a data-driven culture

Organizations seeking to succeed in BI should also foster a data-centric workplace, whereby team members are encouraged to make decisions based on data, instead of instincts.

Moreover, executives and leaders within the organizations should also listen to any questions or concerns and explain the benefits of BI to their workforce. Employees are more likely to be excited about a project if they understood how it benefited them.

#4 | Get the most out of integration

To maximize efficiency, companies should have a clear vision of how they will integrate BI with their IT infrastructure and connect with existing processes.

Integration with ERP systems have the opportunity to unlock more data and insights, and proper BI tools could obtain data from other ERP application within the organization – such as finance and HR – to provide integrated data analysis.

#5 | Constant evaluation

Lastly, every organization has to constantly evaluate and monitor its BI implementation so that it is being deployed to its full capacity by identifying specific metrics and measure them over time.

This way, if improvement to the solutions could be if needed. Keeping track of the benefits and positive change BI ha brought to the company could also lead to broader adoption in the future.

In brief, BI is an essential tool that may end up costing companies too much not to have the solution implemented. And thus, the sooner organization start drafting plans to adapt AI, the better off they will be in reaping the benefit to stay ahead of the competition.

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